This Is What You Wanted, This Is What You Get

Remember back in August when NRO’s Mark Steyn wrote a post at The Corner where he called Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann’s work “Fraudulent” and then, riffing off of a Rand Simberg (remember when Simberg almost used to be “a thing” as a blogger?) post, Steyn added this:

If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.

Needless to say Michael Mann was not amused and threatened to sue. This in turn caused National Review editor Rich Lowry to substitute his wipe-n-clean plastic Palin-Watchin’ pants for his man pants, lather himself up with some Androgel and exhort Mann to “bring it on, bro!”

In common polemical usage, “fraudulent” doesn’t mean honest-to-goodness criminal fraud. It means intellectually bogus and wrong. I consider Mann’s prospective lawsuit fraudulent. Uh-oh. I guess he now has another reason to sue us.

Usually, you don’t welcome a nuisance lawsuit, because it’s a nuisance. It consumes time. It costs money. But this is a different matter in light of one word: discovery.

If Mann sues us, the materials we will need to mount a full defense will be extremely wide-ranging. So if he files a complaint, we will be doing more than fighting a nuisance lawsuit; we will be embarking on a journalistic project of great interest to us and our readers.

[…]

My advice to poor Michael is to go away and bother someone else. If he doesn’t have the good sense to do that, we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country.

This Is What You Wanted, This Is What You Get

Remember back in August when NRO’s Mark Steyn wrote a post at The Corner where he called Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann’s work “Fraudulent” and then, riffing off of a Rand Simberg (remember when Simberg almost used to be “a thing” as a blogger?) post, Steyn added this:

If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.

Needless to say Michael Mann was not amused and threatened to sue. This in turn caused National Review editor Rich Lowry to substitute his wipe-n-clean plastic Palin-Watchin’ pants for his man pants, lather himself up with some Androgel and exhort Mann to “bring it on, bro!”

In common polemical usage, “fraudulent” doesn’t mean honest-to-goodness criminal fraud. It means intellectually bogus and wrong. I consider Mann’s prospective lawsuit fraudulent. Uh-oh. I guess he now has another reason to sue us.

Usually, you don’t welcome a nuisance lawsuit, because it’s a nuisance. It consumes time. It costs money. But this is a different matter in light of one word: discovery.

If Mann sues us, the materials we will need to mount a full defense will be extremely wide-ranging. So if he files a complaint, we will be doing more than fighting a nuisance lawsuit; we will be embarking on a journalistic project of great interest to us and our readers.

[…]

My advice to poor Michael is to go away and bother someone else. If he doesn’t have the good sense to do that, we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country.

In July, Mark wrote on the Corner about Penn State, much in the news for its institutional cover-ups, and Professor Mann. It was a Steyn classic, so it must have really smarted, and soon thereafter NR received notification of a pending lawsuit (here’s our response).

Like his claim to be a Nobel laureate, the charges against NR are baseless and very much worth fighting. National Review doesn’t look to get itself sued, but neither does it shy from a fight, especially one like this. Rich Lowry’s response to Mann’s legal threats exactly captures our mood and determination.

As many of you know, National Review is not a non-profit — we are just not profitable. A lawsuit is not something we can fund with money we don’t have. Of course, we’ll do whatever we have to do to find ourselves victorious in court and Professor Mann thoroughly defeated, as he so richly deserves to be. Meanwhile, we have to hire attorneys, which ain’t cheap.

The bills are already mounting.

This is our fight, legally. But with the global-warming extremists going all-out to silence critics, it’s your fight too, morally. When we were sued, we heard from many of you who expressed a desire to help underwrite our legal defense. We deeply appreciated the outpouring of promised help.

Now we really need it.

So now National Review publisher Jack Fowler has to cash the check that Rich Lowry’s mouth wrote, but whoopsies, they gots no monies because the invisible hand of the free market and capitalism hate hate hate National Review, probably because they publish stupid shit like this.